The final 25 homes at the Crookfields housing development in Staveley, near Kendal, have been completed — but prospective residents cannot apply for them yet because Castles & Coasts Housing Association has not advertised the properties.
The homes form Swift Close, the third phase of Crookfields. Completion was supported by a £300,000 Affordable Housing Grant from Westmorland and Furness Council and recorded in the council’s Quarter 1 corporate performance report, which is due to go to Cabinet on Tuesday 8 September.
For people hoping to move into one of the new properties, the immediate practical position is simple: there is no application listing to respond to today. Castles & Coasts has previously said homes would be released soon, so interested households will need to contact the housing association directly and ask to be notified when phase three is launched.
What has been built at Crookfields
The scheme contains 25 homes, with a mixture of Affordable Rent, Shared Ownership and Rent to Buy properties. The development includes bungalows and larger family homes.
Castles & Coasts set out the more detailed mix when the scheme was approved in 2023:
- Four two-bedroom bungalows.
- Sixteen affordable two- and three-bedroom houses.
- Five open-market houses for local occupancy.
That means 20 of the 25 homes are affordable properties. The remaining five are for sale on the open market but have a local-occupancy condition, so they are not available without restriction to any buyer.
Staveley is around four miles north-west of Kendal, on the road and railway line to Windermere, and lies within the Lake District National Park. The location makes new development difficult, which helps explain why the completion is significant locally.
Drainage and energy features
The homes were built by Russell Armer, the Kendal housebuilder now part of Genesis Homes. The affordable rented properties have solar panels, while Castles & Coasts said the homes were designed to be highly insulated to help keep running costs down.
Drainage was one of the main challenges during the project. David Brown, head of development at Castles & Coasts, said the site required “developing a considered drainage strategy alongside local stakeholders that adds no additional flows to the existing mains sewers in the village”. Planning approval was granted by the planning committee subject to a section 106 agreement.
When will the homes be advertised?
Castles & Coasts said on 9 July, in a Rural Housing Week article, that it would “soon be releasing homes on phase three of a popular development in Staveley near Kendal”. It also said earlier phases had delivered affordable homes for local people and that demand was expected to be high.
However, when the association’s new-homes page was checked on 1 September, the only development listed was in Morpeth, Northumberland. No Staveley properties were displayed. The council report says the development was officially celebrated at a launch event, but does not provide a date, and Castles & Coasts has not published a completion announcement on its own news pages.
The three affordable tenures have different rules. Affordable Rent means renting from the housing association below the local market rent without owning part of the property. Shared Ownership involves buying a share, paying rent on the remainder and potentially purchasing more later. Rent to Buy is normally offered at 20% below market rent, allowing a tenant to save for a deposit and buy the home later; the scheme is available in England outside London.
The five open-market homes also carry a local-occupancy condition. Castles & Coasts used a similar restriction for the earlier phase, requiring applicants to demonstrate a local connection to Staveley.
The council report records 17 discounted-sales approvals and 38 local-occupancy approvals across the wider area during the first quarter of the year. For now, though, anyone interested in Crookfields phase three will need to contact Castles & Coasts rather than wait for a property listing to appear.